


Aftermath

by hotchoco195



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Comfort, F/M, History, Implied Sexual Content, Old bonds, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, all the spoilers!, so spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-04
Updated: 2014-04-04
Packaged: 2018-01-18 04:01:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1414303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotchoco195/pseuds/hotchoco195
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She finds him in a bar in Marrakech.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> I really cannot say it enough: spoilers. Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers.

She finds him in a bar in Marrakech, a scarf half-wrapped around his head and two months’ worth of beard covering his face, empty shot glass in hand. Natasha slumps into the chair opposite him and shakes her head.

“What the hell are you doing, Barton? Slumming it is Banner’s gig.”

“Who?” he blinks at her sleepily, “No Barton here, ma’am. Just plain old Clint. Barton was an agent but that’s done now.”

She sighs and takes the bottle of incredibly cheap moonshine, wrenching the glass away from him and pouring herself a shot.

“It’s done for everyone, Clint.”

“Yeah. Funny thing, that. More secrets than ever and no spies to find ‘em.”

“There are still spies.”

“Scattered,” he glares at her, “Good people gone in the wind. Fury, Hill. Coulson.”

He bites back more harsh words and she grimaces. When the SHIELD files hit the web, Coulson’s name was one of the first to pop up. As if she’d needed more betrayal by that stage.

Natasha leans forward, hand on his wrist. “Before he was an agent, Barton was a good man.”

He laughs. “No he wasn’t, Nat. Far from it. Being an agent was the only thing that made me worth a damn and it was all bullshit.”

“You’re wrong.”

“And what about you, huh?” he rolls his head back, “When I found you it was SHIELD that supposedly helped you stop being someone you didn’t wanna be, and now it seems you didn’t escape that at all.”

“We stopped them, Clint. And as of now, I’m done with agencies. I work for myself, I take orders from no one. You could come with me.”

He groans, frowning through the dim light of the bar. “Tash, if everything I thought I’d done to save people, to protect them, was just for some evil secret society, how the fuck am I any better than the petty thief Coulson discovered all those years ago?

“Clinton Barton, you listen to me and you listen fucking well,” she hisses, “You have done some incredible shit. You helped fight off an alien invasion-”

“Yeah, right, after I gave the bad guy exactly what he needed to open the portal that let those aliens in. Or did you forget my little turn on the dark side?” he snaps.

“Loki was controlling you. It wasn’t your-”

“And HYDRA was just controlling both of us!” he slams his hand on the table, “Don’t tell me you don’t feel as guilty and lost as I do.”

“We all do, Clint,” she says breathlessly, “A whole world full of agents and techs who thought they were working for the good guys.”

He laughs, the sound hollow and flat. “Guess Stark was right about us all along, huh?”

Natasha smirks. “Don’t tell him that.”

“Tash…”

“No. Not here. I’m getting you out of this shithole.”

*****

She’s got a hotel room on the other side of town, with a view over the step-like roofs. She pushes him into a shower and waits on the bed, swinging her legs as she thinks. When he comes out he’s clean-shaven and looks almost himself again if she ignores the blotchy cheeks and dark circles.

“Thanks,” he says hesitantly, tightening the towel around his waist, “I guess I needed that.”

“Not a problem.”

He crosses the room and picks up the silver arrow around her neck, rubbing a thumb over it lightly.

“You kept it.”

“Of course.”

“I thought it might be too sentimental.”

She catches his hand as he tries to move it away. “I loved it.”

She’s looking up at him with that same open, trusting look, the one that says she doesn’t know where to go from here but she’ll follow him regardless. Clint swoops down and kisses her, hand tight on her jaw, and he feels a little less adrift in her familiar scent.

Afterwards they lay under the sheets, not exactly cuddling but still touching: a leg thrown over here, a finger trailing along an arm there. She turns on the pillow to face him but he keeps his gaze on the ceiling.

“We’re free, Clint. We don’t have to be lost. We can just be ourselves again.”

“Ourselves? We don’t even know who that is. Between Red Room and Barney and the circus, neither of us has ever been anything but what people expected of us.”

“Then we’ll figure it out as we go.”

“What if we can’t? There’s not a lot of call for archers these days, Tash.”

“Or assassins?” she arches a brow.

“I don’t know if I’m ready to just be the bad guy.”

“Then we won’t be. We’ll find something else.”

“How do we even start looking?”

She wriggles closer into his arms and presses a kiss to his chest. “Here’s as good a place as any.”


End file.
